I only had to look at the name of the author to know the article was a load of crap. I didn't bother to read it, I know it's crap from his reputation. His grandfather was a corps commander under Patton in North Africa and Clark in Italy. None of his grandfather's good qualities passed through the gene pool.

As opposed to what? The WSJ used to be nearly as good before Murdoch purchased them. Perhaps the WP is better? Now and then maybe. The LA Times? They've cut back so much now the janitor has a column. The Trib? I've found that it scratches when you wipe yourself with it. The Christian Science Monitor used to be good, but I haven't been watching it for a while.

Maybe if you put the Times Picayune together with the Union Leader and the Des Moines Register you'd have something.

ORIGINAL: US87891 You guys want the NYT and PMS-NBC to tell you about your generals, you’ll get the generals you deserve.

Suppose so... I am a bit annoyed by this never-ending Petraeus story and the media. People make mistakes, so he did. From all I can tell, these were limited to his private life, though. Biology, biochemistry -- sometimes wins over brains. Maybe more often than sometimes, that's apparently how nature designed its survival. Nothing new, but obviously the thing that media loves to blow up more than anything that would actually matter for many more people.

What matters is that he stayed true to his professional standards and from what I can take from all the news and discussions is that he did not fail his country there. That this gets mixed up with his private life now in the media is beyond my contemplation.

As opposed to what? The WSJ used to be nearly as good before Murdoch purchased them. Perhaps the WP is better? Now and then maybe. The LA Times? They've cut back so much now the janitor has a column. The Trib? I've found that it scratches when you wipe yourself with it. The Christian Science Monitor used to be good, but I haven't been watching it for a while.

Maybe if you put the Times Picayune together with the Union Leader and the Des Moines Register you'd have something.

The Times wants to be the paper of record, and smugly holds itself to that, so to me it must bear a heavier weight of the criticism. I think that holds true of the Journal as well, not to make it seem like I'm picking sides.

I never subscribed to the opinion that there was some Golden Age of Journalism. I think news outlets have always picked sides and spun things for their team, I've just never seen things so shallow as they are now.

That said, I read the Financial Times, cnn.com, and reason.com. The FT at least pretends a level of intellectual honesty, cnn is well, mediocre at best, and reason.com is my op ed page.

Lucian Truscott IV has an agenda. Not hard to understand, but he puts it out there sharply. Some might object to his hyperbolic characterizations (I don’t, but I can see where others might), but his prose holds certain truths that are not diminished by the defects of the messenger. Not with respect to Petreus in particular, but our top leaders in general.

I am not a Patreus fan, not a Patreus enemy, not a Patreus anything. Never met him, but people who had say he was a good field grade commander. That’s good enough for me.

The Great Game changed with McNamara. When the stars fall, they fell on men who demonstrated management ability as well as combat competence. This has now gone much farther. The new rules under Richardson prized advanced Political Science degrees, and then there was Rumsfeld, Brown, and Weinberger, that collectively institutionalized a PoliSci Phd for a 3 star and up, and they all became politicians.

Their jobs are nation building, infrastructure protection, indigenous peoples protection, crap that State should do but don’t have a clue about. To be a three star looking to get to four star means you have to be a combination of a Corporate CEO and a US Senator, with all those bells and whistles.

Lucian Truscott IV is pissed, because he remembers a time when generals were commanders of troops, not political appointees. He remembers a time when his ancestor was a serious goddam general. Now a days, I think we should find those good combat commanders and freeze them and line them up along one wall of the Pentagon with a sign on each case, “In case of Conflict, Break Glass”.

Col. David Hackworth (About Face) had a similar opinion to Natali's - that competent combat commanders should be freeze-dried and re-animated as needed. His point was that those qualities needed for combat command were incompatible with those needed to navigate the corridors of power in the Pentagon, DC, or diplomatic posts.

but once we started getting involved w/ foreign entanglements (say, Pershing & the AEF?), high command became more of a diplomatic task than a combat exercise. while competence in that 2nd arena don't guarantee ability in the 1st, i don't think it's a mistake to try to retain combat-capability as the 'stars begin to fall', but one must accept that results are going to be uneven.

i think Lucian Truscott IV might need to review his history a bit - generals are (& have always been) both political representatives & combat leaders. the American Civil War provides ample examples - Lincoln & Jefferson could've met at some hypothetical neutral site & exchanged horrifying anecdotes about command-assignments.

5) piss off the us military, and bring about the next holocaust in 30 years

mission accomplished

i am jewish.

we used to let arabs look over our children.

there are a pack of retards in tel aviv (jewish people, if you can believe it are not all the same, most of us work in management, our children go to college, and we build nations)

israel is a place where retarded jews go and hide after the anti-semites chase after them

one day, that worthless strip of desert will be the only place my grandchildren will be safe

and we'll be hiding behind our nuclear arsenal, and the right wing will have their wish fulfilled

OK...ENOUGH! You've managed to take a thread primarily on the subject of leadership and turn it into virulent hatemongering diatribe that offends damned near everyone. Take it elsewhere! I've informed management . Hopefully this post will be locked soon. People have been suspended for a hell of a lot less than this!

i reserve the right however to criticize the policies of my nation's leadership and believe it would have been better to concentrate on keeping the north-american economy strong rather than outsourcing all their jobs to china and force them to send their kids to fight wars, that i feel are completely counter-productive

there was no antisemitism during the Clinton era

petraus did what he was supposed to do, and sowed the seeds of a dark tomorrow